Managing Mobile Plant Operations

9th June 2017

Site safety is key to ensuring a happy and productive workforce. Once a safe environment has been created, it is vital that those managing it understand the importance of its upkeep. Those in charge of plant operations on site are key in setting the safety culture and safety standard. If managers and supervisors do not understand the dangers associated with mobile plant operations, they cannot actively protect the employees they manage and the business.

Legal benefits

Numerous legal obligations are placed on companies to ensure employees are qualified to undertake their job in a safe manner. Managing the training needs of employees is vital to ensure that all operators have the correct, in date training qualification. Alongside this, if managers and supervisors are aware on how to manage mobile plant operations safely, it ensures the company is complying with relevant regulations.

Training should reduce the risk of accidents occurring, in turn reducing potential legal disputes. Equipping staff with the relevant skills should generally mean the chances of bad practice arising on site are reduced.

Preventing unnecessary costs

Reducing the risk of accidents can save businesses thousands of pounds. This is due to factors such as legal fees, lost time, replacement staff, equipment and stock damage. Alongside these factors, accidents on site can also have a huge negative impact to the company’s reputation, meaning profits will suffer.

A less obvious cost to the company, is the decline of staff morale. The more accidents a company has the further the morale of staff will decline. This can be an underlying expense to businesses, staff will be less motivated and productive if they feel they are in an unsafe environment. Staff will also be conscious of the reputation that the company has, which may affect how they feel to be part of such business due to the negative impacts of an accident.

Managers and supervisors who oversee mobile plant operations do not need to operate the equipment themselves in order to manage safely. Understanding the machine and being confident in the principles of it use is enough to be able to spot bad practice and intervene when risks occur. It is fundamental for those managing and supervising operations to understand the dangers in order to safeguard and protect employees.